BOCA(4)

💖 BOCA(4) 💖 — multiplexing serial communications interface

🌸 NAME 🌸

boca — the multiplexing serial communications interface, bestie. That's the whole vibe. 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

Okay so here's the kernel-config tea, no cap. For 4-port BB1004 boards:

boca0 at isa? port 0x100 irq 5
com2 at boca? slave ?
com3 at boca? slave ?
com4 at boca? slave ?
com5 at boca? slave ?

For 8-port BB1008 boards:

boca0 at isa? port 0x100 irq 5
com2 at boca? slave ?
com3 at boca? slave ?
com4 at boca? slave ?
com5 at boca? slave ?
com6 at boca? slave ?
com7 at boca? slave ?
com8 at boca? slave ?
com9 at boca? slave ?

For 16-port BB2016 boards:

boca0 at isa? port 0x100 irq 5
com2 at boca? slave ?
com3 at boca? slave ?
com4 at boca? slave ?
com5 at boca? slave ?
com6 at boca? slave ?
com7 at boca? slave ?
com8 at boca? slave ?
com9 at boca? slave ?
boca1 at isa? port 0x140 irq 5
com10 at boca? slave ?
com11 at boca? slave ?
com12 at boca? slave ?
com13 at boca? slave ?
com14 at boca? slave ?
com15 at boca? slave ?
com16 at boca? slave ?
com17 at boca? slave ?

(The BB2016 is functionally equivalent to two BB1008 boards, and is configured as such.)

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

The boca driver is literally here to support BOCA Research BB1004, BB1008 and BB2016 boards — iconic hardware that multiplexes together up to four, eight or sixteen EIA RS-232C (CCITT V.28) communications interfaces. 🌈

Each boca device is the master device for up to eight com devices. The kernel configuration specifies these com devices as slave devices of the boca device, exactly like the synopsis is showing you. 🫶

The slave ID you give for each com device is what determines which bit in the interrupt multiplexing register gets tested to find interrupts for that device. And the port specification for the boca device? That's what gets used to compute the base addresses for the com subdevices and the port for the interrupt multiplexing register. It's giving very structured main-character energy. 👑

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• /dev/tty?? — the file path, periodt. 💾

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💜 SEE ALSO 💜

• com(4) — go read this next, bestie. fr fr. 📖

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🌟 HISTORY 🌟

The boca driver was written by Charles Hannum, based on the ast driver and source code from David Muir Sharnoff. David wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Jason Venner in determining how to use the BOCA boards. Shoutout to the whole Unix squad for this one. 🫡✨

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🍓 That's the whole page, bestie! This BOCA(4) moment comes from Debian, dated January 3, 1995. Byeee! 💅🔥